"Hush!" interrupted Caroline, her whole being absorbed in watching the couple who now stood together in the bright light which streamed from the open door.
"Coming in, Godfrey?" said Laura. Caroline could hear quite plainly from her dark ambush under the beeches.
Then followed a moment's silence, during which Caroline's heart beat so loudly that it almost seemed to her as if they must hear the thump! thump! thump! ever so far away, like a sound of drums beating. Then Godfrey said: "Oh yes; I'll come in. It is only about half-past nine."
She went first into the house, and he waited outside a moment with the light streaming through the doorway full on his face. All at once Caroline started to run—she must see him alone. She must speak to him.
"Cousin Carrie!" piped Winnie. "You're hurting my hand! You're hurting my hand!" But the door closed before they got across the road, and they were alone in the dark lane.
Caroline looked at that shut door, moved by an emotion which was not only the outcome of the experience of the moment, but which was also a part of her very flesh and blood. Her own mother. Aunt Creddle, Aunt Ellen, generations of women before them—all had lived "in service" and had watched the drama of life going on behind room doors which were always closed lest "the servants" should hear or see. And so acute had these senses become, sharpened by closed doors, that they always did see and hear, though they did not in the least resent this attitude of their employers, considering it just a part of the existing scheme of life.
But Caroline was different; and as she walked slowly along with Winnie disconsolately trudging by her side, she had an angry sense of being shut out from all sorts of things which she had as much right to possess as any other girl. She hated that shut door—Laura and Godfrey inside, and herself outside; then she thought how easily she could destroy all that if she liked, and how Laura's easy, flowery courtship was only possible because she allowed it.
Winnie spoke again and had to be answered; then Caroline went back to the aching round of thoughts again. She wouldn't be put aside like that—knowing nothing. She would give up, but she would not be left outside, guessing what was going on behind closed doors.
She tramped along, dull, dry-eyed, assailed by a strange feeling that she belonged nowhere, neither to Aunt Creddle's sort, nor to Laura's; yet all the time passionately aware that she was a "business girl" and as good as anybody.
Then there was Winnie again. Well, poor kid, she'd had no sort of an evening—— "Look here, Winnie, I'll take you again next week and we'll stop all the time."